In my opinion there are two possible evolutionary paths for additive manufacturing. One is the idea of artificially assembling smaller and smaller parts, faster and faster, with the ultimate goal of being able to digitally assemble molecules and atoms to create anything, just like a Replicator in Star Trek. The other (which was first suggested to me by the guys at Growthobjetcs) is to do away with the 3D printer and guide objects to additively assemble themselves, just like nature does. Scientists at Virgina Tech may have achieved a major breakthrough on this latter path, 3D printing fiber in certain shapes directly through protein self-assembly, without using an extruder.
Their work is reported in Virgina Tech’s Research Magazineand its implications could realistically be very significant, giving us the possibility to genetically manufacture anything from clothing and parachutes to body panels and armor (the US Army’s NSRDEC might be interested), and even something that could rival Spider-Man’s web fibers in strength.
Like many discoveries, it happened almost by chance. The team – led by Justin Barone, associate professor in the College of Engineering (affiliated with the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science), and Ryan Senger, assistant professor in the Biological Systems Engineering Department – had initially set out to find a use for wasted gluten, deriving from the recent gluten-free health craze. After cutting out a section of the gluten protein, the team later found that a series of fibers had formed in the beaker.
“I immediately thought it was a mistake,” Barone said, as reported by Research Magazine. “So we did it again … and got fibers again … So we started to study them and realized we had something big.”
What the team did was mimic and leverage nature’s growth process to build a specific structure, creating the base for an object encoded entirely at the genetic level. The result was that the fibers had self assembled from the gluten and approached the quality of spider silk, something scientists have been trying to replicate for years.
Just as in nature, the researchers can also manipulate the protein to control color, without using any dyes, and, by combining the flute with other proteins, they can create even stronger fibers that even possess electronic properties.
The actual “3D printing” process removes the extruder of more traditional, mechanical additive manufacturing technologies and allows the material to assemble itself from a genetic blueprint. Knowing the rules of protein interaction allowed the team to let the fibers grow from protein assembly inside an E. Coli bacterium acting as a host.
Since fibers are natural building blocks, they could be led to organize themselves into larger, digitally-desgined, structures. This means that they could be used to 3D print articles of clothing with natural fibers, rather than advanced technopolymers, and that these clothes could be stronger and possess a number of pre-programmed qualities. They may even be able to yield something like a “Fiber-Man” suit. I can see the wheels of Marvel’s writers spinning as we speak…
